Motivational Quotes

Government

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

- Gardner, John W.

Best Quotes about Government

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Truman, Harry S

The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.

Beecher, Henry Ward

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

Locke, John

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

A government must not waiver once it has chosen it's course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.

Bismarck, Otto Von

We have the best government that money can buy.

Twain, Mark

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Jackson, Andrew

10.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

John Kenneth Galbraith

11.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

12.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

13.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

14.

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

Einstein, Albert

15.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

16.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

17.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Gardner, John W.

19.

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

20.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

22.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Sade, Marquis De

23.

It is easy to rule over the good.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

24.

An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.

Wotton, Sir Henry

25.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Richard M. Nixon

26.

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign. That is the essence of the problem.

Mirabeau, Comte De

27.

You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

George W. Bush

28.

Office without pay makes thieves.

Proverb, German

29.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

30.

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.

Marshalov, Boris

31.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

32.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

33.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Voltaire

34.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

Reagan, Ronald

35.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

Jackson, Andrew

36.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

38.

I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.

Rostand, Jean

39.

The government can destroy wealth but it cannot create wealth, which is the product of labor and management working with creation.

Murray, Bill

40.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

41.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

42.

Any government is potentially the worst client in the world you could ever possibly want to have.

Thomas Heatherwick

43.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

44.

But their determination to banish fools foundered ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Bunting, Basil

45.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

46.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Updike, John

47.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.